Author: Dave Thomas

BURNLEY 2 LIVERPOOL 0

They were calling it Sensational Sunday, the day GB hauled in a whole load of medals – golf, sailing, cycling, long distance, tennis and gymnastics, just one after the other. If you like sport it was a wonderful day, if not it was hard luck if you wanted to watch something else on TV.

The golf was totally enthralling, a nail biter that went right to the last hole with Justin Rose triumphant; the gymnastics magical. The tennis was simply exhausting, not just for Murray and Del Potro, but for all of us who sat up into the small hours watching and marvelling at the stamina of these two guys. They make footballers look like what they are – pampered and cosseted. Wenger was prattling on about recovery time for his players after they had lost to Liverpool. Football is so far up its own a*rse these days it’s untrue. Four hours those tennis players slugged it out, both of them dead on their feet by the end; epic, monumental, herculean, spell-binding, you run out of words.

It was at the end of the contest that there was one of those great sporting moments; moments that live on in the memory, and this one was the way these two exhausted contestants held each other in a long embrace, Del Potro towering over Murry but burying his head into Murray’s shoulder. Each of them knew that they had played in a memorable game, driven each other to the brink of collapse, tested each other to the limit; their embrace was one of mutual admiration and respect – and it was an Argentine and a Brit to add to the moment, two nations not exactly on the best of terms thanks to the Falklands. It was a moment when sport transcends politics as so often we know it can.

But no gold medals for the linesman and referee after the Swansea defeat as the row simmered on and the press more or less all agreed that it looked like this would be a season to mirror that of the last one in the Prem when Burnley all too often did not get the rub of the green and the decisions they ought to have had.

As Sophie Hitchon from Burnley won bronze with her hammer throw, she belied the rule that women hammer throwers must look like they’re big enough to lift a tractor and brutish enough to curdle milk. Nor is the Hammer one of the glamour competitions as the Daily Telegraph pointed out; whilst those take place in Rome, or Monaco or Shanghai, Sophie Hitchon can be found at less salubrious places such as Szczecin a place where the main attraction is a cemetery.

The Defour deal wasn’t quite finalised after the weekend, Belgium was shut for the day thanks to a national holiday and then I suspect we were all caught napping at the news that David Jones signed a deal that took him to Sheffield Wednesday for a reported £1.8million. The Jones deal really was so sudden and such a surprise, especially as his contributions to two promotions had been so immense. Underrated and undervalued, the quiet man of the team, praise for him poured in from Facebook and twitter.

Burnley have picked up some bargains over the years and Jones has been one of them. One-footed and mono-paced, he still managed to pull the strings, link the play, make goals with his set-pieces, and was the perfect foil for Dean Marney or Joey Barton. Some players influence a game in a quiet, understated way, they don’t stand out, they don’t make flying tackles, but they do the unseen work, rarely lose possession, they make the simple pass, they cover a huge amount of ground, and they prop up the back four. Add all that together and that was the supremely professional David Jones, a player that demonstrated all the Dyche virtues and core principles. Funny how football works out for players; only in his last interview did he say that at last he was at a club where he felt at home. It’s a transient life for so many of them as they move around.

Just a few miles away, whilst we seemed to be back on the market for Hendricks, things at the Wovers were going from bad to worse, and words like bad and worse are understatements. Recently revealed documents seemed to show the huge mess they were in was even bigger than imagined; their fans, or what was left of them, were going frantic. Blackpool, Bolton, they seemed well on the way to joining them in financial meltdown and chaos. Football fans are generally sympathetic to the plights of clubs that have had incompetent owners, or dodgy owners, like Portsmouth who were taken to the brink. Such fans are now looking at Wovers in a similar light; but not the Burnley supporters. Perhaps here and there, there is an odd Burnley fan that might feel just a smidgeon of sympathy for their demise, but if the Burnley fan sites are anything to go by they were few and far between. Memories of the derogatory banner that was flown over Turf Moor many years ago will not go away.

For Rovers fans living in Blackburn along Parsonage Road, then life took an even worse turn. The fed-up residents had waited a year to have all the potholes mended and were delighted when at last the work was carried out, their cars at last safe from ruined tyres, their necks safe from whiplash. Blackburn is already famous for the Beatles line about the town having 4,000 potholes. But the very next day along came another set of road workers and dug up the road again to re-lay it with traffic calming humps, wrecking the new tarmac and areas that had just been repaired. Add to that, the Wovers losing again, this time at Cardiff 2-1 with Coyle chasing one of his angry players down the tunnel after he had stormed off, and it was a good day all round for anyone who finds all things Blackburn amusing.

Gotta say I was thrilled to see the Brownlee brothers win gold and silver and can truthfully say I had a part to play many years ago in their rise to fame. Their mother is our family doctor, the surgery is just a 10-minute walk away, and many years ago on the morning that I thought I’d had a heart attack I went to see her at the surgery and said “doctor I think I’ve had a heart attack.” She asked the usual questions including what was my occupation. “Headmaster,” I said at which her ears pricked up because it’s one of the jobs where stress levels are high and headteachers are thought to be prime candidates for an early fall off the perch. However, in this case it was the prompt for an impromptu discussion about the two young boys.

“Oh,” she said, “I’m really worried about my two boys and their reading.” And she explained that it seemed like they had dyslexia. I would like to have said “doctor I’m f***ing dying here can we get on with the diagnosis and if possible an ambulance.”

But no: I explained that there was no known cure and really it was just a fancy name that made parents feel better because it gave them a label why their kids couldn’t read very well. It kind of made it respectable. But anyway, I said, all kids are good at something, so if they can’t read very well at the moment, they probably have other talents that will compensate. And how right I was. There have been some iconic sports photographs over the years. The picture of the two brothers lying on the ground after the race, arm in arm, is one of them.

And then I continued: “And doctor about my heart attack…”

And if the Brownlee brothers weren’t brilliant enough, next we sat glued to Nick Skelton and the show jumping. That was on the IPad whilst out of the other eye we watched the women’s golf and Charlie Hull. Only the Olympics makes you do this. Skelton is an astonishing 58 years old with a hip replacement, and there he was careering up and down and over and round the fences at breakneck speed and to make it more difficult, all this was while he was on the back of a horse. At that age I went dizzy climbing a flight of stairs.

With Liverpool due next, there was no real anxiety, but there was just the small question of how would we fare against a side containing so many galacticos. A Dyche side would never roll over but would Dyche grit be sufficient on the day to put up a good fight? It was perhaps too much to expect any repeat of the 1-0 win years ago when the gangly Traore twirled on his goal-line and somehow plonked the ball in his own net in one of football’s great comedy moments. It’s an image that remains vivid to this day. Sean D said they’d all been watching the Olympics and it was where the finest detail could make a difference between winning a medal and losing out. But more than that, what the Women’s Hockey team showed were all the Dyche principles of effort, guts, resilience, willpower, team spirit and determination. Outclassed and outplayed for 75% of the game, nevertheless they won against the superb Dutch side.

Whilst the Dutch wept, the Brits whooped and hollered. These Olympics were just getting better and better; Murray, Justin Rose, the Brownlees, the show jumping and next up the hockey girls. What an epic game, drama, the penalty shoot-out, the girls cut, bruised, battered and stitched up. This is no game for cissies, those sticks hurt; elbows fly in, shoulders barge, fingers are cracked, collisions are jarring and frequent. The ball can travel at speeds of 100mph, top players run more yards in a minute than any footballer. It’s where Mrs T first saw my legs when she watched Saturday games at college 50 years ago and when I found out just what a painful game it can be. The legs meanwhile are still pretty sexy, it’s the rest of me that’s not too good. Watching the Final on Friday night was as good a two-hours of sport as you could see anywhere. And if GB found a way to win, why couldn’t Burnley beat Liverpool?

By gum they tried and by gum they DID. They only went out and won. I had the header already planned – ‘Klopp clipped’ in the morning and that’s just how it turned out. And it was without Christian Benteke who tweeted that he was proud to be a Burnley FC player. We looked in vain for him wondering where the money had come from… but apparently it was just him thinking that’s how you spelled Palace. It was an easy mistake to make; Burnley and Crystal Palace are only 250 miles apart. And Liverpool: in their bright yellow kit we thought it was the stewards who had turned out to play.

James Mortimer posted “that’s right up there with Burnley 2 Northampton Town 1, 1986.” Anyone who saw any of the games in that era will know what he means.

“Jurgen Jurgen what’s the score,” the crowd sang.

“You’re not Danny Ings, you’re not Danny Ings,” the crowd sang when a Liverpool shot went high and wide.

2-0 Burnley won despite the astonishing stats that recorded 26 Liverpool shots and 81% possession. Yet despite those stats Burnley never looked like losing, never looked truly threatened, never looked like losing. Liverpool for all their pretty play and intricate passing, never played a killer ball, never seriously breached the Burnley wall, never looked remotely like scoring.

And the Burnley defence: impregnable, dour, unbreakable, dominant, robust, simply magnificent. For all those Liverpool shots only twice was Heaton seriously in action.

And the two Burnley goals: both of them superb, the first from a Liverpool pass intercepted by Gray who slipped the ball quickly to Vokes. Vokes beats his man gets on the edge of the box, pirouettes as if he was on ‘Strictly’ and fires an unstoppable bullet 20-yarder wide of Mignolet. The ground erupted, perhaps not quite on the same volcanic scale as that when Blake scored against Man United in 2009, but still a roar that probably echoed as far away as Skipton.

And if we thought this was a minor miracle then even better was to follow when Defour (Marney with a beard) won the ball and powered forward into the Liverpool half. Halfway in, he released a pass to Gray and Gray did the rest from the edge of the box, beating one man, beating a second, firing through a third defender’s legs, the ball eluding Mignolet’s despairing dive. It took TV replays to show just how sumptuous both goals were.

With the wind swirling, Klopp stony-faced and the crowd roaring, if we thought Liverpool would up the second-half tempo and put Burnley under the cosh, we were mistaken. It was just more of the same, tip-tapping around as if it was some kind of training exercise without one jot of penetration.

The rest of the game was Liverpool trying to unlock the Burnley padlocks but never once was there even a close thing, or a near miss. Not one Burnley player could be faulted, each one magnificent, Mee and Keane utterly immense, over and again Burnley were quick to intercept, quick to tackle, to block and hassle, harry, force Liverpool back and then retaliate with occasional swift counter-attacks.

We’ve had some memorable games at the Turf in the last few years. This was one of them; seventh in the table and who’d have thought it, on course for Europe.

 

BURNLEY 0 SWANSEA 1

There were ten transfer targets sitting on the wall, ten transfer targets sitting on the wall… and if one transfer target should accidentally fail… there’ll be nine transfer targets sitting on the wall…

The info that Dale Stephens was on his way turned out to be duff; on Monday night he was allegedly on the M6 travelling north for a medical the next day. “It will be us supporters that need a medical before long at this rate,” fans tweeted.

Being Chris Boden at the Burnley Express or Suzanne Geldard at the Telegraph must be hard work. Just what do they write about when there is no news? It’s a testament to their ability to tell the same tale a different way each week, that somehow they cobble together a story. The new one was that the news that Sean D didn’t want to put the club’s future at risk by over-stretching the budget. He didn’t want to leave the club in a state of rack and ruin. He didn’t want to just throw all the money on the pitch and if it didn’t work, sail off into the night leaving a mess behind him. Oh to be Phil Hay at the Leeds based Yorkshire Evening Post with a never ending reservoir of tales to tell about the latest Leeds mishaps and Cellino.

Hats off to the reporter at the Derby Bugle or whatever it’s called; this guy made a scoop out of nothing when he reported in his weekly feature that there had been no further developments in the Kendrick to Burnley saga.

I went to the wedding of an African friend last week in Leeds and what a wonderful afternoon it was. Colour, costumes, dancing, music, and a Bishop in resplendent crimson robes with a wry sense of humour that he badly needed seeing as the bride was 2 hours late. It was an afternoon of non-stop “Hallelujah” and “Praise the Lord” and “Amens” every 30 seconds. It was infectiously smiley and exuberant. The two-hour wait just flew by especially with all the music.

It left me wanting to write we’ve signed somebody praise the Lord… we’ve signed somebody Hallelujah… we’ve signed somebody Amen… sadly no… all I can write is Dear Lord please can we sign anybody, even Lansbury.

The Sun distinguished itself yet again when it headlined an article with Dyche Fury. At the press day of a few days earlier he had discussed with journalists from several of the dailies his view on how unfortunate it is that English managers and coaches get no credit for doing just the same work as foreign coaches – and the foreign coaches are seen as geniuses. Be it diet, training routines, or formations, foreign coaches are seen as ground breakers, but in truth there is little that is new in football and they are merely doing what has been done by English coaches, including himself, more often than not. Sean D claimed that he had been using methods used by Klopp and Guardiola for years. Conte, he said, was doing 800m, 400m, and 200m runs and is commended; Dyche does it at Burnley and he is labelled a dinosaur.

Everything he said was measured and considered. It was all prefaced with how much he respects the work of ALL managers. There was not one ounce of disrespect or annoyance; everything was perfectly reasonable. Where the ‘fury’ came from is anyone’s guess. There wasn’t one shred of it. This was journalism at its worst; you could only wonder if this particular Sun writer was even there.

Accrington: the draw for the League Cup produced a wonderful tie, Accrington versus Burnley, you couldn’t help but smile. “A carnival and family affair,” said Stanley owner Andy Holt. They were so close to promotion last season, 2015/16 but didn’t quite make it as we willed them to do it. How can you not feel affectionate towards them, whilst we feel intense scorn of all things Blackburn? Ex-Burnley players, Steven Hewitt, Chris Eagles and Shay McCartan were now Stanley players.

There was that old 1980s Milk Board TV advert where two little lads in Liverpool shirts, scousers, proper scallywags, were in the kitchen. One of them is asking is there any lemonade, the other takes a pint of milk and swigs a few gulps down.

“Milk ugh,” says the one drinking the lemonade.

“Yeh,” says the one slurping the milk. “It’s what Ian Rush drinks and ‘e sez if I drink lots er milk I’ll be good enough to play fer Achhrington Stanley.”

Accrington Stanley resigned from the Football league way back in 1962 with old Bob Lord somehow involved in their demise. The new one dates to 1968 and slowly clawed its way back to the Football League. Lord Bob’s role in their demise was never totally clear and amongst the oldest supporters who remember those dark days, their opinions of him are edged with bitterness. Lord told the press he was ‘helping’ and there was talk of him buying shares. That never happened and at the final creditors meeting it was Lord that recommended that the club should resign from the league. His bitterest enemies have always supposed that it was his intention all along to see the club go out of business and thus ‘see off’ a nearby rival freeing up their supporters to come to Burnley. The national press showed little sympathy for Accrington’s plight, their unpaid electric and gas bills and the total debt of £62,000.

The 1980s Milk Board advert and the two little red-shirted scousers was a nice reminder to the nation that the football club was still twitching.

There were 9 transfer targets sitting on the wall… nine transfer targets sitting on the wall… and if one transfer target should unfortunately fail… there were 8 transfer targets sitting on the wall… The Hendricks saga seemed well and truly over.

There were 8 transfer targets sitting on the wall… 8 transfer targets sitting on the wall… and if one transfer target should unfortunately fail… there’ll be 7 transfer targets sitting on the wall… Pacey winger Yeni Ngbakoto went to QPR. People were asking what would happen first a Burnley signing or triggering Article 50?

And then the news that stunned us all especially after the latest information that Belgian international Steven Defour preferred the riches of Qatar to the murk and drizzle of Burnley; he WOULD be coming to Burnley after all. This too was a deal that seemed doomed to end in failure but apparently he and Sean D had talked face to face in Belgium a few days earlier. ‘My Belgian contacts say he is on his way,’ tweeted Chris Boden. The official Anderlecht twitter account was wishing him luck. Four years, said those in the know.

Swansea: the opening game, a spring in our steps after the Defour news, Theresa May was on a walking holiday in Switzerland, Putin and Erdogan were cosying up (worrying), swimmers were turning green in the Olympic pools, GB had 7 golds so far, one of them went to Colne’s Steven Burke in the cycling on a fabulous night, bookies made Burnley the favourites to sign Patrick Bamford, and the name Ashley Westwood had cropped up again.

An attendance of just under 20,000, expectation and hope, immaculate stadium, the portakabins had gone, but deja-vu, the final score was exactly the same as 2 years ago when Swansea were the visitors, a 1-0 defeat. And once again we left wondering just how we lost that game. It could be the first of many occasions when we think that.

It goes without saying that every Burnley player put a shift in, gave their all, did the best they could and made themselves damned hard to beat. There were several periods in the second half when Swansea were on the back foot. But this the Premier League now, and what worked a season ago, they learned, would not work at this new level, as good shots were saved by Fabianski and the officials missed a clear penalty. In a game they might have won 1-0 in the Championship, at this new level it was the reverse.

Burnley upped their game in the second half and the game became watchable and engrossing as each side showed more verve and commitment. Fabianski kept Swansea in the game, but Burnley’s limitations remained what we have always known them to be and Leighton James summed them up after the game.   No imagination, he said, and lacking a game changer, like Swansea’s Montero who from the minute he came on ran Lowton ragged, ran with pace and flair, and sent the cross over that led to the goal. Burney simply did not have anyone who could do this. It was hard to think of a single cross at pace that came over from Boyd or Arfield; two players who inevitably when they have the ball wide, turn back and lay the ball off.

The first half was one to forget, low key, timid, quiet, was this really the Premier League we were watching; Swansea marginally the better side in terms of neatness, approach and passing, Burnley with the same side that won the championship, but minus Barton. New man Gudmundsson was on the bench and remained there until 15 minutes from the end. Did he bring anything different? No he is simply another version of Arfield, a willing worker. Kightly, the one player that does possess pace and does attempt to take a man on, remained on the bench. On came the Jut for a cameo five minutes, the lad with pace, Long, now farmed out to Fleetwood.

The big talking point was the shirt pull on Keane. How could the linesman with an uninterrupted view not see it? Or did he simply ignore it. Anywhere else on the pitch and that would have been a free kick. This goes on game after game, as does the wrestling, pushing and shoving at corners. We are all sick of it; the hierarchy do nothing to solve it. Dyche fumed and rightly so; Swansea were well versed in the subtle arts and crafts of Premier football, the diving, the shirt pulling, and the theatricals. Burnley were not. They are brought up differently. You could argue it cost Burnley the game.

If the shirt pull on Keane was a game changer, then the ‘dive’ by Fabianski right below us when he and Arfield went for a 50:50 ball well outside the penalty area almost by the touchline was a disgrace. It was close enough for us in our seats to see it perfectly. Arfield actually held back, there was minimal contact, but down went Fabianski like a sack of spuds, rolling, clutching, rolling a bit more, play-acting, then a bit of writhing for good measure, face etched with ‘pain’ and then finally inert on the floor curled up holding his legs. Poor Arfield looked bewildered. The referee clearly decided this was play-acting, ignored the whole thing and gave a throw-in. Why was Fabianski not booked; it was deplorable, the more so when he sprang up and ran back to his area like a spring chicken. The blessed Harry Potts, Corinthian to the core, scourge of all cheats, never afraid to dash onto the pitch or throw a cushion at a referee, would have been out of his seat in a trice, and dragged Fabianski back on his feet by the armpits.

MOTD confirmed what we all knew, that it was a blatant penalty plus the need to spend more money if Burnley are not to end up bottom of the heap. If memory serves there was talk in the summer of a £60million fund but perhaps they need to add to that the £30million left over from the previous season. And from that there has to come an injection of real pace and width.

And the Swansea goal: there was a sort of grim inevitability that they would pinch a goal; they had the nous and that electric burst of pace from Montero. Heaton made the save from the header but alas palmed the ball to the lurking Fer who scored. You could argue he should not have been on the field if the ref and linesman had spotted his shirt pull on Keane. But, alas, this is football and we went home thinking just how did we lose that one, just as we did so often two years ago in the Prem season of Ings and Trippier.

“You get your pocket picked,” said Sean D post-match. “That’s the harsh reality of the Premier League.”

Brave displays and gallant efforts; defiant losers yet again, Keane and Mee coped well, Marney buzzed, Gray was a real handful. But Groundhog Day was here again.

But not all was gloom, they did themselves proud in the second half, we couldn’t have asked for more. Then there was more gold for Great Britain, tons of it, Nigel Farage sporting a ‘tache now looking like a dodgy second hand car salesman, Blackburn were trounced again and by Sunday teatime after the next games, Burnley had moved up a place and were third from bottom.

Reasons to be cheerful then: Hallelujah, Praise the Lord and Amen; there, I managed to get them in after all.

 

 

 

BURNLEY 1 REAL SOCIEDAD 1

Thursday August 4: and Sean Dyche was buoyant in a SKY interview despite the lack of signings. The last time this happened he knew something that we didn’t, that Andre Gray was on his way. We wondered if something similar was in the offing, maybe that Flanagan was about to sign.

In the meantime it was Chairman Mike Garlick in the firing line on twitter, Facebook and the fan sites for the seeming inertia. Who’d be a chairman? One fan set up a poll – who is the best chairman, Mike Garlick or Barry Kilby? The point of it escaped me as it seemed to be asking who you would want in charge of spending the jackpot money. But Barry K was never a big spender, in fact it was Barry that so often used the phrase, “not betting the ranch.” Of the seven directors there’s probably only Brendan Flood that you might describe, on past evidence, as a ‘spender’; so if six out of seven are ‘careful’ men, it seems a bit unfair to point the arrows at just Mike Garlick. Over the past year they have spent big money, but it’s been on infrastructure. Spending money on players this time round has been the topic in pubs, clubs and websites.

In a very lengthy thread on one website there was a good comment – that spending money is a state of mind and after years of caution, and even parsimony, is there a mindset that means there is a genuine nervousness about spending large sums of money on players or raising the maximum wage level now that there is such a large sum available.

     “It isn’t hard; it’s a state of mind. I really believe that they have been so used to counting the pennies for the last 40 years, they are actually frightened of spending money. It’s not that they don’t want to, they don’t know how.”

It might fit in with a thesis I once read about the nature of change and adapting to the new needs that change brings, be it in business or anywhere else. The financial situation at Burnley has changed significantly and the Premier League money flooding into the club, especially a club with no debts, enables a change in thinking. The club has changed to a new higher level and the thinking must evolve to match that level.

A week earlier there had been as good a Burnley article as I’ve read – this one in the Guardian by Nick Miller. It was impossible to find anyone that disagreed with it. The salient points were all true enough:

‘Winning the second tier does not necessarily mean you will be any good in the first especially if you have a “short arms, long pockets” policy when it comes to buying players… they have a curious view of the transfer market (a reference to the low first offers for Jeff Hendrick)… The big problem is that Burnley need to spend money not simply to progress but merely to tread water… modest additions might be financially prudent but you have to wonder about the intentions and dare we say it, the ambitions of a club who stick to their parsimonious approach so consistently. It goes without saying that the sums demanded by players, clubs and agents passed the “absurd” level some time ago. But at some point you surely have to hold your nose and pay up. What is even more curious is that they were perfectly prepared to splash out whilst in the Championship… you could forgive Sean Dyche for wondering if promotion last season was worth the bother.

     ‘With Gray in the team they should at least score more than their puny total of 28 goals in 2014/15 and if their defence stays together they should be fairly solid. In some ways being sensible with one’s money is to be applauded in a football world that so often wantonly sprays cash around, but the purse strings have to loosen and pretty soon. Otherwise Burnley and Dyche could be in for another season of admirable failure, when they are potentially capable of so much more.’

   If the transfer incomings weren’t providing too much to smile about (Flanagan was still undecided at the beginning of the week) then a few more tales from Roy Oldfield’s memory bank did the trick when I went over to see him again. He recalled the time in the days of Paul Fletcher when he was often the butt of their humour or the victim of a prank or two, and then laughingly recalled the day he gained a measure of revenge when he went into the dressing room while they were training and re-arranged and jumbled up all their clothes so that when they went back to change there were puzzled looks when they all found someone else’s socks or underpants, shirts or trousers on the other side of the dressing room on someone else’s peg. Not one of them ever suspected Roy but he says he took great delight being nearby and listening to the reactions:

“Where are my f***ing underpants:” “Whose bloody socks are these?” “Hey that’s my shirt.”

Then there was the referee who shall remain nameless who more often than not brought a woman with him to the game. Roy didn’t bother much about it or think it odd, until the time he took a tray of tea after the game to the ref’s room, knocked, went in and was aghast to see a stark naked woman. His mouth dropped wide open, his eyes came out on stalks but he did manage to hang on to the tray of mugs. The woman didn’t bat an eyelid and the referee cheerfully said to him: “Just put the tray on the floor Roy, thanks very much.”

He reckons ex-player Tommy Cassidy owes him a few bob as well. “He was a smashing player,” said Roy, “but he couldn’t run much because he ‘ad a bit of a belly on ‘im. Anyway he asked me one day could I look at his garden. So I did and it was like a jungle but anyway I did a bit of what I could for him, did three visits if I remember but Tommy was always the same and told me “he’d see me right, later.” He never did of course and if ever I ran into him at the club it was always “oh Roy I’ve nowt on me at the minute.” A lovely Irishman but he still owes me money to this day.

And Leighton James: ‘He came off the pitch at halftime in one game, Burnley were losing and Taff had had a bit of a stinker. “This pitch is crap,” Leighton said to me and stormed off. Then in the second half he had a better game and scored. I think we won as well. “This end of the pitch is fine, much better,” he said at the end of the game as he came off looking well pleased. “But that other half is still crap.”’

Even taking into account it was ‘only’ a friendly, we came home from the Sociedad game thanking goodness for two things. Firstly the steak baguettes at the Kettledrum and secondly the goal poaching brilliance of Andre Gray.

The Kettledrum steak baguette is I have to say, a thing of wonder. I didn’t have a tape measure but the baguette was maybe just short of a foot long, packed with succulent steak, caramelised onion, and melted blue cheese. Cooks and chefs are an amazing breed; in theory putting blue stilton cheese on a steak would seem to be a daft idea but in fact it produces a taste sensation that makes you go oooh all over. Then when the juices of the steak drizzle into the crusty baguette giving it a wonderful steaky taste with the added blue stilton to give added zing, you have something to set you up for any misfortune heading your way – in this case Burnley versus Real Sociedad.

Yes it was ‘only’ a friendly, a game with little meaning but it was not without some significance inasmuch as we saw a limp, lacklustre, leaden-footed Burnley given a bit of run-around by the Spanish side for the whole of the second half and much of the first, once they had weathered the Burnley storm of the first 20 minutes or so.

Mind you, perhaps storm is a bit of a misnomer, it was more of a strong breeze than a tornado, but nevertheless Burnley were dominant in the early stages, had two good chances to score (Gray and Mee) and had umpteen corners. And then they vanished from the game allowing Real to score from a free kick with a headed goal courtesy of some iffy defending and marking.

From that point on Real had all the possession, were nimble and fleet of foot, delicate and accurate with their short passing and slick running, bored the pants off us from time to time with pass backs to the goalkeeper or theatrical falls and head-clutching, but overall seemed well set to take all three points if there had been any.

Sure it was only a friendly (we all keep saying) but it was abundantly clear that dark days may well lie ahead if Burnley continue to lack pace out wide, and flair anywhere. Plus it was unnerving to see the number of occasions when Burnley got themselves in a real tizswoz, or were at sixes and sevens in their own penalty area as Sociedad buzzed around and forced them into errors and got into situations where they just had to score – but somehow didn’t.

And then enter Mr Gray in the dying moments latching onto the ball on the edge of the box from a knockdown by the Jut, finding himself bursting through and calmly firing into the net. The 13 Real Socieded fans in the away end, each with their own personal steward, must have wondered just how Burnley had managed to equalise and how their own team hadn’t won. And thus they joined the ranks of many an away group last season that left Turf Moor with similar thoughts – how on earth did we not win that game. The answer is simple; Burnley may play badly, but they are just a damned hard side to beat.

Whether this will suffice in the months to come is debateable. As long as there is Andre Gray there is always the chance of a goal; what a magnificent pre-season he has had, but surely more is needed. The side is full of dependable workers (Gudmundsson is another) and whilst hard work is admirable, any side needs a couple of players with real magic in their boots to really compete and do more than just put up a good fight.

Sean D in his latest interview pointed out that they had the money to buy players, but not the money to pay huge wages, the biggest challenge. Belgian Steven Defour, if reports are correct, seemingly prefers a big payday in the sweltering deserts of Qatar to something less remunerative in the hills and vales of soggy east Lancashire. The Spaniards certainly got a taste of the vagaries of Burnley weather, sun and shirtsleeves one minute and a soaking the next, when the heavens opened during the game.

Gray’s goal was (as far as I can remember) only the second meaningful Burnley shot on goal of the game. Until that moment, Sociedad had been in complete control with the Burnley midfield chasing shadows.

It was the penultimate weekend, the weekend when the real hype starts, the TV features, the Sunday paper features and the pull-outs and supplements. I couldn’t resist buying a few things, the MOTD magazine that had a big chart and things you can stick on, the Sunday Mirror had an Andre Gray feature and a Premier league supplement. There was an even bigger Andre Gray feature in the esteemed Sunday Telegraph. Tom Heaton and Sam Vokes were on the SKY Sunday morning sports Goals on Sunday programme. The Championship had started but Burnley weren’t in it. Like Tom Heaton said, it felt weird. The talk of Leicester and Michael Keane wouldn’t go away, now they were said to be ready to offer £17million. If it is anything above £15million the decision to stick or twist becomes a tricky one, sell him or fend them off again.

Two other bright spots were nowt to do with the players or the game or food. Firstly there were the sparkling new slimline, space-age floodlights which left me wondering how they change a bulb when one goes faulty; and secondly the advertising boards that you don’t notice until someone says aren’t those electronic advertising boards bloody distracting, and then yes, they immediately become distracting because you can’t take your eyes off them. The distraction of goal music has gone, but I never minded that. But the pitchside flags – for goodness sake if we are going to have flags let’s get some real whoppers like they had at Rangers. Now they were proper flags.

 

 

1: Looking for Rab C. Nesbitt

GLASGOW RANGERS 1 BURNLEY 3

If there is such a thing as the perfect football weekend, then you’d be hard pushed to find a better one than this one, the Burnley FC Supporters Club weekend in Scotland for the next of the pre-season friendlies.

Summer break was over, batteries re-charged, interest and enthusiasm building nicely; you wonder where the time goes. The England performances at the Euros had been dreadful, booted out by tiny Iceland. It was humiliating but the saddest thing was we didn’t really expect too much more from them. They landed back in the UK and I couldn’t believe that they had staff there to hold umbrellas over them as they got off the plane so that they and their headphones wouldn’t get wet. But Wales and Sam Vokes – brilliant we agreed.

Roy Hodgson resigned, what else could he do, he looked a tired, spent force on the bench during the Iceland game, bereft of any idea as to what to do. Only just this week he revealed that after the game he was deeply upset to see players already asking each other whether or where they were going on holiday for the summer.

But into August: Brexit the winner, Burnley certainly wanted out, Theresa May in charge, Cameron gone, Labour at war with itself, Andy Murray winning Wimbledon, Lewis Hamilton taking charge at the top of F1; and now it was Premier League madness and hype taking over, new floodlights, new super-store, builders and workmen still cluttering the place with just days to go. Bookies already making Burnley favourites to go straight back down. Clubs like Man City and United and their super-star managers splashing money and making the whole thing more like a circus than ever before.     There was a joke going round that Man City had offered 50million plus Sterling for John Stones of Everton. But Everton had called their bluff and said no thanks just give us the 50million.

Thanks to SKY and the reams of pages in the press the build-up is relentless. Back in the olde days when Jimmy Mac pulled the strings, pre-season consisted of first team versus reserves; Probables versus Possibles they called it with just a page or two in the local press.

As we left Leeds Friday morning, however, you’d have been forgiven for thinking that this had the makings of a soggy three days as rain, drizzle, grey clouds and mist low enough to obscure the moorland hills as we drove through the valley from Todmorden up through Cornholme and then towards Cliviger, cast an air of drabness, gloomy enough to have us thinking we’d have been better off staying in bed.

But the football fan is by and large a hardy creature and lo and behold as we headed up the M6, the gloom lifted; the sky cleared, the sun emerged, and to our left Morecambe Bay appeared and even this looked quite appealing as the sun shone down and we began to think the world looked a decent place.

Morning coffee break was in Moffatt famed for its waters with healing qualities that are said to be particularly efficacious for those suffering from gout, arthritis and rheumatism. Alas it ceased being a Spa Town in 1921 when the Hydropathic Hotel burned to the ground. But, surveying the passengers bowling along in the Hodder coach, a defibrillator special, it seemed an apt stop. It was hard to spot anyone not of pensionable age, in fact the average age was probably heading towards the 70s, given a boost by Harvey O’ Hara now well into his nineties.

Harvey deserves special mention; he was a D Day commando leading the way when the allies landed in Normandy and there are few of these disappearing guys left. D Day took place 72 years ago and Harvey is still around to tell the tale; he was awarded the Legion d’ Honnneur quite recently.

‘I know exactly where I was on D Day,’ he says. ‘I was next to the end on the left.’

These breaks in the journey can be labelled or graded by the number of pints that chaps like Barrie Oliver and Harry Gardner can consume. Moffatt was a three-pint stop. Impressive: we were only there 5 minutes. Sensible people like me and Mrs T have a bowl of nourishing soup. Moffatt is a nice enough place, small, very Scottish, a sheep farming town nestling in the hills, and famed for the rustlers whose motto was why should I grow my own sheep when I can pinch somebody else’s.

And so to Troon by the sea but take away the Golf Links in Troon and the long, clean beaches, and there probably wouldn’t be much to write home about, except for the Chinese Restaurant on the High Street. This is the Jade Dragon, made famous now because it is where the newly married Scott Arfield dines with his in-laws when he is in town. A few of the group had gone in there on Friday night, some in their Burnley shirts of course, so the proprietor was immediately wondering if this was yet more of the Arfield family clan, but no, it was quickly explained to him that Burnley were in Glasgow the following day and these were just fans up for the weekend, but could they put the meal on the Arfield account.

The hotel, right by the 18^th green, had carpets well worn by the feet of all the top golfers who have stayed there and by many of the rooms on the wall are plaques to say this golfer or that stayed in them if they were a winner or a runner up. Greg Norman had stayed in the one next to us. A very fine hotel though with views of the sea, the jets coming up from Prestwick airport and the backs of the huge scaffolding stands, tall enough to block out the sun and that take weeks to dismantle. Impressive though, the Open Championship had ended a couple of weeks before we got there but the sense of something big and special was still there.

Matchday and you can’t beat a brisk walk after a very fine breakfast, out past the 18^th green, up along the beach into Troon and then along the Prom to the harbour and back again. On twitter Paul Weller was asking why we can’t spend 20 to 30 million, it won’t kill us if spent right, he adds. The £3.5million we have spent was on display at Ibrox, plus Jon Flanagan would be arriving from Liverpool on loan for the season. The Stephens and Hendricks sagas seemed to have gone quiet after a series of increased bids had all been rebuffed.

‘I’m like a broken record,’ says Sean Dyche as for the umpteenth time he says how difficult the transfer market is unless you want to spend silly money. It’s in the chairman’s hands, it’s down to the board, he says pointedly but politely. Does he mean that the chairman is doing his best and they would spend a lot more if other clubs were cooperative; or that the problem is that the board isn’t bold enough, finds it difficult stepping up to the next level, and won’t think big enough?

Last year’s profit was the £30 million that Paul Weller is talking about and on top of that is the Ings money.

“It needs that magic big cheque to get signed,” Dyche added. “It’s up to the powers that be… it’s their job now to get the deals over the line.” You can read into that what you will, but it does seem it could well be a very gentle challenge. Not quite an ultimatum but almost and the messageboards went into overdrive as folks analysed and dissected what he’d said. But the general message from fans was clear, that the current level of spending was totally inadequate.

But: if there is over-caution in the boardroom maybe it is based on director memories of near disasters in previous seasons. They will well remember the Orient game of ’87, in fact Clive Holt was a director as far back as that; others were certainly fans and will remember how bad things were. Then there was the ITV Digital collapse of 2002 when suddenly the money dried up that had been made part of projected budgets. There were bucket collections and requests for donations of £1,000 and the tale is told that at one point the club was within 30 minutes of administration. The club was most certainly insolvent at the back end of the 2009 promotion season and if there had been a defeat at Wembley the abyss of administration would most certainly have beckoned. And for how long did Barry Kilby keep the wolf from the door with his canny handling of the club’s financial problems during the Ternent and Cotterill years. If they are careful it is simply because none of them want to be responsible for anything that takes the club back to those precarious times.

Burnley directors will be well aware that poor decisions and dodgy deals killed Rangers, a club that simply imploded and then had to be re-invented. What a stunning ground Ibrox still is, the old tenement blocks that surrounded it, streets and streets of them now long gone, replaced by open spaces and shopping centres. Rab C. Nesbitts are hard to find these days in the Ibrox area. The welcoming greetings were friendly from people who were proud of their club and ground; they’ve had some tough times and this club not that many seasons ago was the classic financial basket case. It was a club that went into liquidation, had to be re-born and ended up in the Scottish basement league from where it has had to claw its way back to the top table. One assumes they are still not that well off, otherwise why sign Clint Hill, given the run-around all afternoon by an on-fire Andre Gray.

The whole thing was very much a stroll in the park for Burnley, two up by half time, and it could have been three after Vokes hit the post after some scintillating Barcelonaesque approach play. Gray got his third early in the second half and then Burnley relaxed (Dyche not best pleased at their casual we’re-ready-to-go-home-now attitude. A few changes were made but by and large the last 20 minutes or so was just a side going through the motions. They didn’t need to do much else.

As we slowly nodded off in our little corner it was the seagulls that woke us up as dozens of them appeared out of nowhere cavorting all over the place with spectacular skill, swooping and diving and mobbing one poor creature that had managed to snaffle a large crust from the streets below. The poor thing had no chance of eating it and the real fun began when it dropped it; it was caught in mid-air by the next bird, which then likewise dropped it as it was pursued by the mob, and so it went on until presumably one of them managed to swallow it down.

Heaton, Mee (despite his o.g) Keane, Gray and Marney impressed; new man Gudmundsson was neat and tidy in his cameo appearance. Marney in fact was outstanding and if this form continues into the proper games when they start, then Joey B will not be missed.

By and large Rangers could find no way through the impressive defending and Barton was very quiet. Of course he was given a grand reception by the Burnley end but other than pinging a few long passes from inside his own half he was restrained and almost casual. Dyche and he had coffee on Friday afternoon and it’s not rocket science to suppose that Dyche was disappointed he didn’t choose to stay at Burnley.

The pitch was immaculate and there’s something splendid about the lush, pristine condition of a football pitch at the beginning of the season. The green is just right, the lines where the mowers have been are perfectly straight, the groundsmen have been out manicuring; the height of the blades set scientifically, the amount of fertiliser needed per square metre worked out by computer. It’s an absolute science these days at the top level a far cry from years gone by when the grass was gone by the end of November.

Old groundsman Roy Oldfield said he only ever cut the grass diagonally just the once for a change. It was when Terry Cochrane was at Burnley but Brian Miller took Roy on one side to have a word with him.

“Don’t do it that way again Roy,” Miller told him. “If you do it that way, Terry Cochrane won’t know where he is and he’ll just run and follow the lines into the corner and he’ll end up by the flags every time he gets the ball.”

When Roy left it was Arthur Bellamy who took over and Arthur was never shy of yelling at players for a sliding tackle that dug a deep furrow, or when someone kicked up a huge divot. Arthur in an old programme feature said that he and his team would sit on the bench watching and pointing where the divots were appearing and it could take them a couple of days to repair them when conditions were really bad.

Divots and long gouges are a thing of the past now at Turf Moor although it might be fun to hear Paul Bradshaw bawling at Pogba or Ibrahimovic “Oy yer great lummox put that divot back.”

 

 

 

 

 

CHARLTON ATHLETIC 0 BURNLEY 3

The irony was clear to everyone. One club, Charlton, relegated, angry fans, badly run, foreign owners, had been on a downward trajectory since they had exited the Premier League.  The second club, Burnley, stable, well managed, local directors, passionate fans, no debts, realistic and had achieved promotion to the Premier League yet again.

You might have argued it was a metaphor for the state of the game. Chaos is the norm, debt is the norm, and failed ambition is the norm. But a club run like Burnley, a model club, a well-run club, ‘a proper football club,’ is the one-off and quite unique. The failed policies of Blackburn, Bolton and Blackpool are to the west, the remnants of Leeds United and Sheffield United to the east. Burnley is the shining light of football and the model that others declare they aspire to.

Leicester  City were the public darlings, everyone’s fairytale story but Burnley is the club that comes from a small town of just 80,000 people, that 30 years ago was knocking on the door of closure. Leicester got themselves a brand new sparkling stadium out of administration and now has millionaire owners that fly back and forth in helicopters. They scout Europe and the Far East for players but as Burnley Director Barry Kilby once said, “We look for people in Skipton.” I know which my fairytale story is.

And so to the final game of the season at Charlton, with the Football League having decided that the trophy would be parked in Middlesbrough in case they were the title winners. If not then either Burnley or Brighton would be presented with it at a later date. Although Burnley’s promotion was secure the situation was that any of the top three clubs could end up as champions.

Dyche said they were heading there with one purpose, to win the title. “Preston was the big result for us,” he said. They all had a warm inner glow, not the one that comes from a bowl of porridge, but the one that had come from doing the job they needed to do on Monday and beating QPR. Their only concern was what kind of disruption to the game might come from the disgruntled Charlton supporters. How must they have felt seeing that the visitors were the successful Burnley side heading to the Promised Land? Just how does this small unfashionable club in this small town do it, they must have wondered.

Who writes these scripts: one game being top against bottom and the top side still needing the win to be champions; and at the other end of the country a virtual play-off for the second automatic promotion place? These were no ordinary final end-of-season games with players thinking of beaches in the sun.

It was the hottest ticket of the season: the websites during the week before were swamped with requests, ‘anyone got a spare ticket?’ On the day before the game Facebook and twitter were filled with pictures and messages that people were already heading down to London for the weekend. On the morning of the game there were dozens more from people about to depart or on the motorways, or on trains. More than just a few tweets damned the vagaries of British rail. 3,000 tickets were available for the game but yet more messages revealed that by hook or by crook other Burnley fans had tickets in the home stands. The rest of us said thank the Lord for SKY and put an extra shilling in the electric meter just in case.

The night before Mrs T had said, ‘Are you nervous?’

I said I wasn’t but by the morning I was. ‘Champions’ has a wonderful ring to it. It’s not something you can put on your CV too often. It would be the icing on the cake and anyway wouldn’t it be just a hell of an achievement to go half a season undefeated, a new post-war record and all on a day of glorious sunshine in the capital. Meanwhile, all of us wanted Brighton to win at Boro. Karanka had shot himself in the foot as far as we were concerned with his barbed remarks about Dyche and Burnley. Knowing the trophy was up there it would be nice to say: ‘look this is what you could have won.’

It had been a few years since Burnley had been involved in any end of season game that could be described as truly meaningless or lacking in any interest, the kind of game where we’d go along out of a sense of duty and then sit and doze as the season ebbed away.  This one was up there with all those end of season games that had so much depending on them, be it winning promotion or avoiding relegation. Burnley has had a great record of winning games at Charlton; it was a 3-0 win in the last promotion season. If we could have chosen a team to play against for this final game, Charlton might well have been the popular choice.

Charlton fans had their own plans to get their message across that they wanted their owners out and their club back. A huge sit-in was being organised to disrupt things as much as possible in front of the main stand entrances and the ticket offices. Charlton had hired an extra 100 security staff to prevent objects being taken inside. The popular bet was sprouts. As it turned out it seemed to be just rolled up balls of paper and the occasional flare in the second half.

Burnley Football Club means so much to so many people – like Tom Tomlinson from Cambridge – on pins like the rest of us hoping we could win the title:

Being a Burnley fan living in Cambridge means I have made the trip up so many times over the years by both train and road. This time was different, not sure why; myself and my two boys, Sam 23 and Jack 20, had decided weeks before that this, QPR, was the game and we had decided on a stop-over at The Premier Inn. I was nervous, the boys in high spirits; last time I had felt this nervous for a home game was Orient in 1987.

     The days very different on the pitch, very different off the pitch; in 1987 in a very rare occurrence my dad let me down and said we could not go to Orient. I was distraught. 15 days before I had major knee surgery to correct a ruptured ligament, but aged 14 I defied my dad and went anyway.

    The day ended with me sitting on the pitch crying my eyes out, for three reasons. My beloved Clarets were staying up; because of the late kick-off and the celebrations that followed I was going to miss my train home; and last but definitely not least during the melee on the pitch I got knocked down right on my bad knee. 

     But this time, events up to kick-off were much less traumatic. An easy journey up followed by a cheeky breakfast in The Boot; the usual over-spend in the Turf in town, parked up and in the fan zone for 12.30.

     My son said to me at half-time during the Brighton game “can you feel it?”

     “What?”

     “This is it, it’s our day,” and he winked. At Wembley in 2009 a rather worse for wear Claret said this to us as we were going in and randomly hugged and kissed us.

     You know the rest, Brighton drew; we won. I was sat in the David Fishwick the same as ’87. I found myself on the pitch the same as ’87. I hugged Sam Vokes, Joey Barton, I got knocked over again but I got up again (there may be a song there) and the night ended with celebrations, songs and family in an ale house I have never frequented before.

     We’ve not been able to get Charlton tickets, so SKY it is, followed by a Bar B Q in the garden – and no doubt another sore head. Tom Tomlinson

     The morning dragged, 9 o’ clock, 10 o’ clock and 11 o’ clock. At last coverage started. Common sense said this should be a win, but Charlton had other ideas and were slick, pacey and carved out regular chances. Burnley were sluggish but took the lead with a fine goal, in truth their first bout of dangerous passing of the game; it took them to the edge of the box whereupon Ward put a superb low ball over that eluded the defenders and there was Vokes to tap home. What utter relief and joy at the same time.

Burnley we thought would settle and begin to turn it on and dominate the game. Wrong: this was a limp showing, letting Charlton have possession, the defence dropping back and giving them space so that it was Heaton that was the saviour several times, three of his saves being world class. The half continued in the same vein with a Charlton goal looking inevitable so meek were Burnley.

It was a Burnley player that revealed to the SKY team on the way out for the second half that they’d had the mother of all bollockings in the dressing room. Irony indeed, in the most recent interview Dyche had said he didn’t throw teacups but it was clear that he could dish out the verbals. It might have been so different in the first half if attempts on goal from outside the box had been of the Bobby Charlton thunderbolt variety rather than the ambitious attempts to float clever shots into the top corner. At least three times this happened as if the players were having some kind of competition to see who could actually manage to score this way. All of them went into the crowd behind.

The second goal came early in the second half and it was another beauty, an Alka Seltzer goal, settling the stomach. Three passes and the ball was out on the left with Lowton this time; the cross came over and Gray got a head and flicked the ball to Boyd beyond him just outside the 6-yard box. Boyd controlled it, took his time, he had plenty of it, enough to read the programme, not a Charlton player near him. He slammed the ball home. Delirium this time, not just relief; surely that was it, the game was won and the title belonged to Burnley.

And then it got even better. Within a minute Burnley had scored again with a stunning goal. You could have been forgiven for momentarily switching off and missing it; since when do Burnley ever score two in a minute?  Marney sent a glorious 50-yard pinpoint pass out wide left to Gray. Gray just about controlled, cut in, and fired home an angled shot. And that was that, job done, game won, play out the game, and be crowned champions, except the cup the team held aloft was a plastic inflatable that a fan had brought, apparently all the way up from Cornwall.

Charlton played with verve to the very end, their fans by now having spent the final 20 minutes of the game making their feelings known but without seriously disrupting the game. Stewards with sand and buckets periodically ran on to the pitch to gather up the flares, the firework kind, not a pair of 70’s trousers. At the end of the game there was one of those lovely sporting moments when Burnley fans in their hundreds on the pitch, stood at the Charlton end to applaud them and their protests. The Charlton fans returned the applause.

Whilst the two Charlton fans on the SKY sofa at the Charlton end of the pitch no doubt squirmed and grimaced, we at home on our best-room, parlour sofas, sat back and relaxed as soon as that third goal went in. Now we could enjoy it. Now we knew we were the champions and on the very last day, in the very last game, number 23 of the unbeaten run since Boxing Day, we were not just going up, we were the Championship Winners in a season without one red card. Not that you would have thought so from the niggardly coverage on the news channels where Middlesbrough seemed to take centre stage. It would have surprised no-one if the BBC had announced that the Championship winners were Barnsley. Let’s face it Burnley are not front page news and whilst at Leicester, galactico Andrea Bocelli was singing centre-stage; at Burnley we’ve got Chumbawamba and the Milltown Brothers if one day we need a flashy intro.

Dyer, Barnes and Duff came on and for Duff it must have been an emotional moment. It was announced afterwards that this was his retirement game. What a dignified way to leave the game, on his own terms, at the very top, over 600 career appearances, nearly 400 of them for Burnley, a player who is respected and admired. How well he has served Burnley Football Club, helping them win three promotions to the Premier League, a quite unique achievement, and a member now of the Burnley Hall of Fame.

Sunday morning and normally I’d be out buying extra papers, but this time what was the point. Champions and heading to the Prem but as far as the media were concerned, still little Burnley, unfashionable, and barely worth more than a paragraph. The esteemed Sunday Telegraph was a case in point.  On the very front page of the broadsheet main section was the top-of-page banner Joy for Burnley, Middlesbrough and of course Leicester. Wow I thought maybe a feature inside. In the actual sports section there was not one single mention. The Sunday Mirror had a two page spread on Middlesbrough. Burnley was a footnote at the bottom of the page. Never mind, here we were in deepest Leeds, with flags in the garden and banners in the windows. An inflatable trophy would have looked grand on the doorstep if I could have found one.

But the best was yet to come. There was a new hot ticket in town and they had sold out weeks earlier; tickets for the Gala Player Awards Evening at the club the day after the Charlton game. Win the title on Saturday and a Gold ticket party just 24 hours later. 600 of us squeezed in around the tables laden with food and wine, on a glittering celebration evening.

But this time the trophy was real.

BURNLEY 1 QUEEN’S PARK RANGERS 0

It was a belter of a game on the Friday might of the penultimate weekend and for 94 minutes we were all Birmingham fans. It was a tame first 20 minutes and it would have been more entertaining reading the telephone directory. Slimmed down though it now is, there’s still enough content to put anyone to sleep.

And then it livened up, became end to end stuff with Brum’s Donaldson, Cotterill and Fabbrini catching the eye. Our nerves twang quite enough when we watch Burnley, now they were twanging watching Birmingham. We roared when they took the lead, there were reports of fireworks in Padiham, groaned when Rhodes equalised with as daft and scruffy goal as you will ever see involving a Sunday morning goalkeeper error, groaned even more when Boro then went ahead, beat the air and settee in delight when Birmingham scored again with a screamer. And then we decided the linesman was just the nicest man in the world when he disallowed a third Boro goal that looked perfectly OK. Nugent came on in the final minutes and we assumed the worst that he would score in extra time. The script was written for him. He didn’t. Karanka of course insisted afterwards that the world was against Boro and different ref rules were being applied to them. He was called various things on the Burnley websites, none of them repeatable.

2-2 it ended and immediately out came the calculators, equations and formulae, notepads, backs of envelopes, scraps of paper and old maths books as most of Burnley and Clarets everywhere from Todmorden to Tasmania  hurriedly jotted down all the different remaining results and points and permutations and possibilities until our heads were spinning. And still we couldn’t quite work it out definitively. Burnley had two games remaining, Brighton had two and Boro just one and now had 88 points with the other two on 87.

On the websites and messageboards the common theme was that the obsessive figuring out of the final positions was doing people’s heads in. As far as I could make out as long as Burnley beat QPR, whatever else happened, Burnley would be up in at least second spot. And then my brow furrowed, I thought again, out came the bit of scrap paper again and I re-did the calculations – and still I wasn’t bloody sure. Only one thing could be said with certainty and that was if Burnley won BOTH their games, yes, they were UP.

The next games were not until two days later, another 48 hours of thinking and wondering and computing and calculating and the Burnley game was an absolute sell-out of home seats with extra blocks opened in the Cricket Field Stand. The media, TV, press, websites had at last cottoned on to this fantastic end to the season and the endless variations of results and scenarios. The three sides had just five games left between them yet no-one seemed able to say with 100% certainty which club would end up top or second. None of us could remember an ending quite like it. Sales of black market mogadon and nitrazepan had trebled. Doctor’s surgeries were besieged by insomniacs seeking help.

Sunday, Tour de Yorkshire, May Day, pole dancing and stuff, Morris Dancers, village greens, white rabbits, no Burnley report to read in the Sundays, although there was a Dyche feature in one of them; countdown to the Monday game against QPR. Speculation, calculation, ponderation, can they do it, can we do it, joy or gloom, relegated Bolton beat top-six Hull to demonstrate yet again that nothing is for certain. Doomed Charlton the last day opponents won away at Leeds. Nerves, head scratching, finger nails, grey hair, 50 shades of it, celebration or commiseration, what would it be?

Superstition and compulsive disorders were widespread. Since the unbeaten run began some people had worn the same shirt to every game, or walked avoiding the cracks, chins had gone unshaven, and there were lucky scarves. Some folks had worn the same socks; one guy had odd socks, no matter what the weather one guy always wore his duffle coat, one person had worn the same items of jewellery, drivers took the same routes, people ate the same breakfast and put clothes on in the same order. It’s football; we do these things. It’s all phooey, baloney and tosh, course it is… but I made sure I put my left shoe on first.

Monday arrived, Jeremy Corbyn in town, early morning grey skies, cold and drab again, with Brighton set to play early afternoon so that for now we were all Derby fans with Shackell forgiven and all of us urging him to be the wonderful, handsome, urbane, imperturbable and elegant player that had once condescended to grace our turf and earned our admiration until he had decided the Derby grass was greener. His departure was temporarily forgiven; as the game kicked off we were his most ardent devotees again.

The carnival atmosphere at the ground was astonishing, the atmosphere unique; the anticipation utterly immense. Outside the Fanzone beer tent a huge TV screen had been erected showing the Brighton game. Food stalls and activities made the whole thing more like a country fair. This was shoulder to shoulder stuff, cars crammed in the car park, drinkers squeezed round the big screen, armies of fans marching up Harry Potts Way, more extra blocks of seats opened up, and a total sense of expectation you could have bottled.

We watched the big screen and urged Derby as if they were our own. That is to say we watched the big screen if we could get near it.  How many people there – at least a thousand glued to the giant TV, many with pints in hand willing Derby to help us out. And indeed they did; the roar that greeted the Derby goal was the equal of any that salutes most Burnley goals. Priceless, exactly what we wanted, but a Derby win was surely just too much to hope for. So it proved, with Brighton equalising very late. 1-1 it ended still a great result for Burnley so that now we knew we could say for sure ‘win and we go up.’

Early rain had changed to bright, sunny, but still cold skies. The sun shone but the promised 75 degrees was still a few days away. Anyway it was the Daily Express that was forecasting a min- heatwave and we all know how accurate their weather news is.  The roar and volume of noise that filled the ground when Burnley came out was awesome, almost frightening. These were our gladiators; shut your eyes and it might have been Ancient Rome with us willing QPR to succumb and fail so that we could give them the thumbs-down and see them mercilessly despatched. Oh for a performance that matched that against Wigan two years earlier when Burnley had purred like a Rolls Royce with immaculate passing, individuals skills, and sprinted like greyhounds, all in equal measure.

But, oh dear, alas this was not a day that Burnley purred like a Daimler or a Bentley and Dyche at the end had to acknowledge that this was not a good day at the office. This was not a Rolls Royce display this was a 20-year old Skoda failing its MOT, stuttering, coughing and spluttering.  Dyche said they couldn’t be brilliant every day; this was all about the result, about their resilience, hard work and strong chins. And they needed those strong chins with QPR outmuscling Burnley time and again and with Vokes and Gray fighting for scraps.

Heaton in the first half proved the old Cloughie adage that a good goalkeeper is worth a dozen points a season and his string of first half saves earned the three points just as much as the Vokes header that decided the game. It wasn’t quite shooting practice for QPR, but the chances they created and the shots they had, could have so easily won any other game but for Heaton’s cat-like vigilance and sharpness.

In truth this game by half-time had ‘upset’ written all over it so that it seemed inevitable that everything would go right to the last day down at Charlton. They were not playing well, but we willed them to grab the priceless win that would take them up but this was a game that was scrappy, decent football at a premium, flair absent, it’s like they’ve got their feet stuck in glue, said Mrs T at half-time. Nerves, apprehension reigned supreme.

A goal seemed a million miles away, but then a free-kick in the sixtieth minute out wide. Jones, he of the sweet left foot, the other is just for standing on, took it low and in-swinging. Was this a training ground move? It looked like it as Vokes suddenly darted in front of the markers to the corner of the 6-yard box. The perfect trajectory connected with this head that glanced it into the far corner of the net. Blink and you missed, such was the speed of the whole thing and there it was; the ball nestling in the corner of the net and the ground going mental.

It didn’t quite sink in at first, the brain didn’t compute, it was so out of the blue, had we really scored, was promotion now firmly in our hands. The noise roared round the ground, the mood changed, the support increased, confidence grew, there was now a different kind of inevitability that we were going to win this game, as if the script was clear, that the draws for Boro and Brighton had now opened the door for Burnley into the Premier League. Riches as great as those that Carter found in Tutankhamen’s tomb beckoned.

Now there really was belief and conviction, this was going to happen, it was ordained, the win was just part of the great masterplan that this was the day when everything converged, the stars were aligned as they should be, and that everything so far had been the precursor to this one result. QPR had been so much better than Burnley yet here we were winning 1-0. QPR hit the post with a stunning curling shot, yet here we were still winning 1-0 and it just seemed that nothing was going to take that away even though there were 20 minutes left although you could be forgiven for thinking that Referee Moss had other ideas.

Moss contrived to disallow a perfectly good second Burnley goal when he spotted the goalkeeper on the floor as the Vokes header went in. The nearest player to the goalkeeper was a QPR player; it looked to me that the keeper had just keeled over to get the free kick. As it turned out it didn’t matter but it might have done. A QPR player should have been red-carded as early as the 2^nd minute when he lunged into the back of Barton’s ankles from behind with a horrendous challenge. Moss gave a yellow. The most curious thing he did was noticed by many people. As the first half ticked away QPR took a corner, the ball was cleared, Moss raised the whistle to his lips to blow for the end of the half, a QPR player steamed in to take a shot, Moss lowered the whistle as if to give the lad time to take the shot, the player took the shot, then Moss blew for half-time. According to Mrs T he blew for full-time absolutely spot on and it was then the signal for the ground to rise as one in acclaim and utter, wild jubilation.

The little club had done it again although this time, said Dyche, it was not the same kind of fairytale as it was two years earlier when the promotion was a surprise to everyone and Burnley snuck in under the radar.  This season it had been planned and designed as a result of losing three key players and bringing new players in. And on top of all that was the expectation placed on club and players this time round that was so different to two years ago. The experts and media expected that Burnley would at least be in the top six; other managers referred to the ex-Premiership players and the huge sums Burnley had supposedly spent.  And hadn’t Karanka in his moment of pique said that he’d have had Burnley promoted by February.

What poetic justice that Sam Vokes who missed so much of the last Premier Season should score the goal, the £200million goal, the magical goal, the solitary goal that brought unbridled joy and an eruption of seismic proportions, that brings financial security for another four years, a pot of cash so great now that the jar on the mantelpiece will surely be replaced by a wheelbarrow in the corner of the boardroom filled with Premiership gold.  A great club, great town and great people commented both Steve Cotterill and Ian Holloway that deserve this success and promotion.

A genius, said Holloway of Dyche. ‘I lived round here for three or four years,’ he said. ‘I know these people.’ Both he and Cotterill received applause every time they walked round the perimeter to get to their broadcast and summary pitchside point.

We put away our slide rules and calculators, formulae and equations, cleared our heads, superstition flew out the window, it didn’t really matter anymore which sock we put on first, Burnley were UP. We knew it at last and we all sang ‘til it rang around the ground. .  And now you’re gonna believe us… and now you’re gonna believe us.

        At last after all these years of lies, smears and cover-ups the South Yorkshire Police were found guilty of unlawfully killing the 96 victims of Hillsborough. 27 years it has taken to see the truth out in the open at long last. The affected families and campaigners have been magnificent. Those who hid evidence and doctored testimonies have been shameful; the institutionalised cover-up was monumental and the society of Freemasons in South Yorkshire now comes under scrutiny. And then there is of course the role of Margaret Thatcher. Of course the verdict was big news and as we watched TV replays of the scenes at Hillsborough, the horrifying scale of the disaster came flooding back. Not only were there 96 deaths but there were over 700 injuries with many of that group still suffering the effects. The effects on the families will never go away and listening to them and the campaign leaders brought lumps to our throats. Ordinary men and women beat the ‘system’ to get this verdict. It took them three decades; they have been simply wonderful.

It was St George’s Day, it was the 400^th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare, and Obama astonishingly threatened Britain with the back of the Trade Agreement queue if we left the EU. Burnley sat top of the league. A sheepdog somehow walked 240 miles over 12 days to get back to its first home after it had been sold to someone in the far north. We saw hailstones like golf balls, snow on the streets of London and hills covered in snow. Somehow Van Gaal’s Man United had sneaked a way through to the FA Cup Final. Mourhino was linked with the job there. It was not far short of a year since Danny Ings went to Liverpool and now Burnley fans sat waiting for the result of the tribunal.

Meanwhile we were all over the moon with the win at Preston. And it was Charlton versus Brighton and Middlesbrough versus Ipswich. We were asking who would be the first to blink. The answer to that came when Middlesbrough could only draw at home. They dropped two more points. Brighton of course won at Charlton as everyone expected them to but could only score three thus leaving Burnley still with the better goal difference. It meant that with just two games remaining for each team it was Burnley still at the top of the pile, not Middlesbrough – but only just.

With Burnley having played on the Friday night and no further game until May 2, there would be a ridiculous ten games without a game. At this stage of the season it seemed absurd but there it was and so we looked at all the permutations over and again.

IF Burnley won their last two games they would be champions if they could maintain the better goal difference. If either Boro or Brighton won their last 2 games and scored enough goals then Burnley would only be runners-up. One of the two could drop all three points on the last day, or both of them would drop two points if they drew their final game against each other.

And Burnley’s final two games, the first at home to QPR and the very last game at Charlton with away tickets already sold out. The Charlton game against Brighton was marred by crowd scenes, marches, protests and a delayed start. The natives were restless down there and who could blame them seeing their club relegated against a background of contentious ownership. Trouble is, it posed a serious question.

What would happen if due to crowd scenes and pitch invasions the final game of the season was badly affected and abandoned? The season before, the final game at Blackpool was indeed abandoned when fans vented their spleen. It was decided in that case that because the demonstration was so late in the game it would not be replayed as it had no bearing on the season’s final placings. But at Charlton in such a high profile game, with the possibility of Burnley’s promotion or Championship title hanging on it, exactly what would happen? It was a genuine question and one that added spice to an already enthralling finale, especially in front of 3,000 Burnley fans and some Charlton fans threatening to throw not just Brussel Sprouts onto the pitch but boxes of drawing pins. Their fans were adamant; the campaign and disruptions would be unrelenting until they got their club back and the Belgian, Duchatelet, was no longer owner. The Clarets could face organised chaos someone noted. How would the team react; how would 3,000 Burnley fans react?

Clearly the Charlton fans have good reason to dislike Brussels for reasons other than the EU and its 43,000 bureaucrats. Whilst us other footie fans might be more worried by being banned from the Champions League if we leave (unlikely), that we won’t be allowed to call British sausages ‘bangers,’ and that we will be invaded by giant French snails, the Charlton supporters had more serious reasons to dislike someone from Belgium.

Dyche sang Joey Barton’s praises after the Preston game and not for the first time. ‘He was excellent and he’s been excellent all round. He’s still delivering and has a real thirst to be successful. He continues to be in among that group that’s got that. He’s been a good example to the whole group. He’s been fantastic. He’s still got his edge and desperately wants to be successful. It’s a great credit to him. A lot of people said I was losing my senses signing Joey. But the lads enjoy having him around; he allows other players to come to the fore.’

Preston manager Simon Grayson echoed those thoughts and was complimentary about Burnley in general: ‘he’s been a fantastic signing. He manages his game both with the ball and without it. He shows his experience and plays that position really well. When you look at Burnley and their recovery runs they get back into their shape. They have players who can influence games.’

And now it was 21 unbeaten games. It was a remarkable achievement, we all agreed, and yet it hadn’t produced any clear lead at the top; too many draws had seen to that plus the other two sides each having good long runs of consecutive wins. Most of us probably wanted Middlesbrough to be the one that would miss out, on account of Karanka’s unwarranted comments about Dyche and then Burnley’s style of play. Already there were stories that whatever happened he would leave at the season’s end.

But outside the Premier League did the media really care? Not on Saturday morning after the away win at Preston. Here was the team that had just gone top again in a local derby game but there was not a mention of the game at all in three dailies that I saw; page after page of Premier League stuff but not a mention of PNE 0 Burnley 1.

On Monday 25, at last the media in a limited kind of way did begin to cotton on to the situation at the top even looking at what would happen in the event of the teams in second and third place having identical records with nothing to separate them, not impossible if all the final games had the ‘right’ results. It could happen for the first time ever that second and third would face a play-off game, to decide who would take second place and who went into the actual play-offs. A unique situation was brewing including the unheard of scenario that top and second could be in a similar position with utterly identical records so that this would entail a play-off to decide who would take the Championship title.

And then we came back to the obvious; if Burnley went out and won their last two fixtures none of this would matter one jot. They would be up. And there was that word again… if…

The pundits also latched onto the Charlton situation and hoped that their fans’ common sense would prevail. It would be bad enough that Burnley might face a game that would decide how their season would end, without having to worry about would the game even finish. And by now everyone was noting that the jackpot would be up to £200million by the time parachute payments and extra commercial income were taken into account.

In our blinkered view of football (what else matters but Burnley FC) just sometimes we can lift up our heads and see other football news. Leicester City slammed four past Swansea to go 8 points ahead again in their fairytale season. Some might argue it is not a fairytale and that they have fabulously wealthy owners; that some years ago they went into administration and came out of it smelling of roses and that two years ago there might just have been some financial diddling going on in their promotion season. But that doesn’t take anything away from the present crop of players who have performed miracles. Spurs could only draw at home to West Brom so that Leicester’s lead was only cut by one point.

Leicester on the verge of winning the Premier League, Burnley on the verge of promotion again, Accrington on the verge of promotion; it would be an astonishing end to the season if all three clubs reached their destination.

It was a week when we could look at moments in past games that with a better outcome might have secured promotion earlier (February according to Karanka), Cardiff goalkeeper Marshall’s super saves in the home game against Cardiff, the sure-fire penalty that was not awarded in the home game against Ipswich, the Wolves last minute equaliser at Turf Moor being just some of them. Then there were the moments of luck that preserved the unbeaten run, the ball gently looping over Heaton and bouncing off the crossbar in the home game against Cardiff not to mention the number of times that opposing managers and fans must have wondered just how Burnley had beat them.

Even almost a full week before the QPR game the excitement was mounting with not much more than 200 tickets remaining and the club opening up another block in the Cricket Field Stand. It promised to be an absolute sell-out despite it being live on TV. If the two other big results of the weekend went the right way, it would be the game that could see Burnley promoted we hoped. But there were no assumptions, no presumption of a win. Football is too unpredictable. West Brom demonstrated that at White Hart Lane to the chagrin of Spurs supporters, glum-faced at the final whistle. Ipswich too demonstrated the first rule of football at Middlesbrough – take nothing for granted. Barton we knew would be relishing the game. We all remembered the incident of the coke bottle when one landed on his head at Turf Moor. We all remembered that he made no fuss at all and just got on with the game.

We messed about with all the possible results permutations until we went stupid, but in reality what it boiled down to was that if one of them, Brighton or Boro, only drew their penultimate game and Burnley beat QPR, then Burnley were up… or did it… and then we scratched our heads again? But what gave us nightmares was both of them winning their penultimate games and Burnley losing to QPR. If they then drew their final game against each other that was Burnley goosed and consigned to the play-offs.

I wondered if I was becoming just a tad obsessed. Driving to Wetherby I deliberated, my mind was drifting, if we would manage the fairytale again or would we fall short at the last two hurdles. Shopping at M&S and perusing the cauliflowers I was thinking that Ashley Barnes was due a goal. In a meeting I was dreamily distracted hoping that Birmingham could do something against Boro on Friday. Watching an episode of Blue Bloods I lost the plot because I was thinking just keep two clean sheets and somehow nick a goal at the other end, that’s all we ask. Wandering round Home Bargains looking for cheap tins of beans my mind is at Turf Moor and it’s half-time and we’re 3-0 up already against QPR. I’m watching Master Joe (too big now to call Little Joe) in the football training session on Tuesday night; he scores a hat-trick in one game, which sets me thinking can Andre Gray grab a hat-trick in either of the last two games? And then when Mrs T asks what veg we shall have with our dinner I’m thinking Charlton…protests… Duchatelet… Belgian… Brussels… sprouts. And it’s only Tuesday and the QPR game is still six days away. This is getting ridiculous, I decided; it’s time to get a life.

But well done Ben Mee. At the Supporter’s Clubs Awards night he was named Player of the Season with Joey Barton the runner up. Game after game it has been Joey B that has been in the spotlight and his performances have been consistently exceptional whilst Andre Gray has been the darling of the Press with his goals record. But unobtrusively doing his job in the background Ben Mee has been a huge success; a centre half by trade, but played as a full back for so long that many folk seemed surprised by his performances in the middle of the back four since it was re-organised after Boxing Day. He isn’t the tallest guy on the block but somehow he has that priceless ability to time his jumps and out-head forwards inches taller than himself. His bravery is the stuff of legends; who will forget the time he headed the ball when it was actually on the floor and boots were flailing and kicking all around him. Single minded, eyes only for the ball, never mind the lumps, bumps and bruises, classic attributes of a rock-solid centre back; he’s one of the quiet ones and goes unnoticed… but not by the supporters.

PRESTON NORTH END 0 BURNLEY 1

Mrs T had no voice the morning after the Middlesbrough game. She was the perfect woman while it lasted. Mine was just a sort of rasp and a croak, a bit like a parrot with a sore throat. What a night it was and another five minutes and I swear we’d have nicked the winner.

The video of the players’ celebrations when Keane scored were as memorable as the goal itself. The players leapt and screamed and grabbed each other in a melee by the corner flag with Barton leaping onto the top of the pile like a wild man. That’s how much it meant. The subs had raced down; staff had raced down, stewards danced with joy, one young lad from the crowd was lifted aloft by Lowton and then carried around over his shoulder. The lad will remember the moment for the rest of his life. These are the magic moments of football.

The way things were as the end of season approached with just three games remaining, and just two points separating the top three teams, the body remained willing, but the head was almost unable to take any more as no-one, just no-one, was able to forecast who would go up, as nerves were shredded, as emotions were up and down like a fiddler’s elbow, as we waited for the next game on pins. It’s a mental mangle that we go through; it’s a pain process that has no logic with some fancy name along the lines of benign masochism where we for some reason deliberately endure discomfort or mental torture sure in the knowledge that it’s great when it ends.

I swear I once knew a bloke who used to whack himself on the head with a rolled up newspaper for up to 5 minutes at a time. I asked him why he did it.

“It’s just so lovely when I stop,” he said.

That’s exactly how it was during the Boro game. We squirmed, we endured, we groaned, we clenched sphincters; we grit our teeth and generally went through hell. It was the football equivalent of what that bloke used to do with the newspaper. And then when it was all over, the mental high was extraordinary, the joy was just seismic, the relief was beyond measure. It was football and this is what it does.

‘A helter-skelter match decorated with pulsating play,’ said the Irish Times.

‘A rousing, captivating encounter, toe to toe, blow for blow, 96 minutes of ferocity and courage,’ said the Daily Telegraph.

We searched for comparisons: the promotion win at York in the old Fourth Division maybe in ’92, the promotion win at Scunthorpe in 2000, the League Cup win at Chelsea on penalties, the Wembley play-off win in 2009, the 1-0 defeat of Man United;  there might be a few more. But one thing is for sure, they don’t come every day.

It was a trip back to the garden centre at Harden, Bingley, on Wednesday; the drive was in warm sunshine, a chance to get our heads back on again, come back down to earth, the egg and bacon butty delicious (I had that while Mrs T wandered up and down the brassicas). It should have been a kind of warm-down after the night before but I couldn’t get rid of those incredible images.

On my way out of the restaurant I was stopped by a face I didn’t recognise and she asked me, “Is that you; weren’t you the Deputy Head at St Margaret’s Horsforth years ago?”

I nodded and smiled without any idea who she was. She explained she was the mother of three children I had taught years ago; it must have been over 40 years ago as each one turned 11. One was now an architect, one had an electrical business and the girl was a teacher. She laughed and asked, “Do you remember that report you wrote about Andrew when you said if he didn’t buck his ideas up he’d more than likely end up as a road sweeper. We’ve still got it.”

It was fun being a teacher all those years ago when you could write stuff like that on kids’ reports.  You’d be had up now by the PC brigade, apparently road sweepers can be very sensitive,  and anyway by the time I’d left teaching it was all tick lists and computerised with pre-written comments that you could print out.

We exchanged more pleasantries and went our separate ways, she chuckling at the old report, me with my head still at Turf Moor. I found Mrs T with a trolley filled with brassicas and stuff and I asked could we get some claret and blue garden gnomes. She said no. Her voice back had come back.

In a week that saw the Queen’s ninetieth birthday and then the sad demise of the brilliant ‘Prince’ and the wonderful Victoria Wood, plus all the EU stuff that we are now bombarded with on a daily basis, be they IN or OUT, (apparently if we leave we shall all starve to death from 2030 onwards), it may have gone unnoticed that Middlesbrough were deemed ineligible for promotion. It was revealed in the SOCCER on SUNDAY website, a seemingly obscure site, so well done to them for discovering that:

     Middlesbrough Football Club were dealt a cruel blow with the FA declaring the North Yorkshire club ineligible for promotion. A return to the top flight had looked likely for the Championship frontrunners until the ruling. Under the Football Association’s new Three Strikes law, clubs relegated three times in any 20-year period will be banned from promotion for 10 years after their last relegation, in Middlesbrough’s case until 2019.

     “Three strikes and you are out,” FA Chairman Greg Dyke told Soccer on Sunday. “Middlesbrough have been up and down like a whore’s knickers. I’ve seen lifts get less vertical action. It has to stop. The age of the yo-yo club is over. The FA will no longer stand by while an institution such as Middlesbrough goes up and down like a deranged chimp on a pogo stick.”

     Should they finish in this season’s top two or win the play-off, the FA have confirmed that Boro will be compensated for losing out on promotion. Players capped ten times or more will pocket a brand new Zanussi washing machine, and the club itself will enjoy a lifetime supply of Tesco ham.

     “They can stick their ham,” former manager Bryan Robson told Soccer on Sunday. “Don’t get me wrong, Tesco ham is different class. But we’re talking about players missing out on the Premier League. Ham, even Tesco ham can only soften the blow so much.”

     Boro manager Aitor Karanka was even more diplomatic. “Of course we will challenge this ruling,” the Spaniard told Soccer on Sunday. “But if we lose, then we will accept the ham and move on as professionals. But to be fair Tesco ham is different class.”

We couldn’t get to Preston. Months ago we’d arranged for good friends to stay for the weekend. It’s a good job they’re tolerant and know what Burnley means to us so that there were no complaints when the TV went on for the game on SKY. Watching on TV is far worse than watching a game live. When it’s live you shout and holler, get worked up, you’re part of what goes on and see the whole picture not what a director wants you to see. It’s a tribal thing and you are part of the tribe. On TV it’s just a segment of the field, there’s a sort of odd detachment; it’s funny really, at a match I’ll leap up and rant at a referee for any bad decision. Sometimes a naughty word or two will just pop out and Mrs T tells me to sit down and shut up. On TV I just sit there, inwardly churned up of course, but outwardly impassive with the appearance of calm. It’s not the same telling a TV to f*ck off.

Over the years many players have appeared for both Preston and Burnley but the two that caught my eye were Jack Mustard in the 1930’s and Archibald Pinnell in the 1890’s. Earlier in the season Preston had won 2-0 at Burnley. Currently they hadn’t won in four.  Tom Heaton said that the mentality at the club was stronger than ever. David Jones commented that on all three occasions that he had experienced promotion to the Premier League the common factor had been a good dressing room spirit. Now he looked to add a fourth promotion. Joey Barton on twitter said he was honoured to have been named in the PFA Championship team of the season but would not be attending the ceremony – there was still work to be done. Apparently the names had been leaked and along with Barton there was Tom Heaton, Michael Keane and Andre Gray.

Sean Dyche said he wasn’t losing any sleep, he could only control the controllables, he couldn’t rely on the twists and turns or lady luck, you concentrate on what you do, not what others do. You can only cut your own grass, he concluded. Whatever will be will be. After a game like the one against Boro, by the time he’d driven home he’d got it out of his system. Now it was time for ‘shoulders back.’

Not far short of 6,000 Burnley fans filled the away end at Deepdale waiting for the game to start; the messageboards and social media were awash with requests for spare tickets.  At Moorland View we tucked into Salmon Mousse, then Chicken Moutard avec Crème Fraiche followed by home-grown rhubarb tart. We’re just ordinary, poor folk, but we struggle on.  Austerity means champers is just a memory, it’s tap water not Pellegrino, the fast lane we used to enjoy is now more of a slow journey in an old Morris Minor. And, anyway, if we are all gonna starve by 2030, we decided we’d better get stuck in now and get ready.

As we tucked into the pre-game cheese and bickies and Colombian mints, the permutations wouldn’t go away. A Burnley win and we could begin to think about an automatic place. It would then put pressure on Boro and Brighton in their Saturday games. A draw would not be a disaster but would probably mean having to win the final two games. A defeat (an agonising thought) and who knows what might happen because that would mean the other two needing to lose a game each before the season ended to see us still in contention. If we were in this state, heaven only knows how Karanka’s bowels must have been faring, rational thinking not being his strong point recently.

To our delight and relief they DID win. It was 1-0 but could so easily have been three or more at half-time they were so good and racked up the shots and headers with Preston on the back foot for all the 45 minutes. This was as good a 45 minute performance as we had at Brentford, except this time the extra goals they so richly deserved did not go in. It was hard not to think this was just too easy as Burnley carved them open time and again with slick play.

Preston were simply blown away but somehow went back to the dressing room only one goal behind and so for all Burnley’s superiority all of us knew this was going to be a nervy second half. Grayson is no mug and made tactical changes so that Preston got into the game more and more. Even so Gray hit the post with a stunning shot on the turn and then Boyd hit the crossbar with a mighty 30-yarder. You willed another goal to go in because you knew that 1-0 could so easily be turned into a 1-1 or even 1-2.

Alas after Boyd’s shot hit the bar there was little else up front from Burnley as they had to dig in at the back and Preston showed why they are in the top half of the table forcing Burnley into five bookings. But throughout the game this was the Barton and Boyd show. Everyone played well but these two were outstanding. It was hard to think of any single player who had been brought into the club who has such a major impact in such a short time as Barton. “He’s a leader,” said Boyd in the post-match interviews and how it showed in this game.

Preston too had their second-half chances and the returning Beckford could so easily have scored. But this would have been rough justice on a Burnley side that deserved so much more than just the one single goal that came from a deflected long-range Barton free kick as early as the sixth minute. The rest of that half was a delight to watch, but at the end we sat on the sofa squirming and wriggling and willing the final minutes away. We roared at the six extra minutes at the end of the Boro game; now we groaned in anguish when there were five in this game.  Benign masochism, déjà vu, you might say.

So: in this epic, enthralling finale to the season Burnley went top again by just one point, but three ahead of Brighton. The commentators made it sound so easy. “Win their next two games and Burnley will go up.” Would that it was so simple we all said at Number 12. There was still a scenario that would put Burnley back to third if Boro won and Brighton stuck six past Charlton, the latter a real and nagging possibility. We could think about the Premier League, we told ourselves, but that’s all.

It remained neck and neck with the finishing line ever closer but still with nothing certain. Now it wasn’t Gaviscon we needed, it was sedatives, with a long ten-day wait to the penultimate game.

BURNLEY 1 MIDDLESBROUGH 1

The euphoria of the win at Birmingham continued all through Sunday on the websites. Gary Rowett the Birmingham manager was savaged by most people for his blinkered view of the game and his comments that Barton had just about run the referee and that he had made a meal of the bad tackle that nobbled him in the first half. It wasn’t a yellow said the Bluenose. Then he made up some nonsense that Brum should have had a penalty when Keane nearly kicked someone’s head off (actually he connected with the lad’s chest) and then he wondered if Barton had been taken off to prevent him doing something stupid.

‘Morgan’ on Uptheclarets, one of the prominent fan sites, was seething at the abuse hurled by Birmingham fans at Dyche, Barton and Lowton (being ex Villa). A resident of Birmingham of 44 years he’d sat in a home stand and was privy to the foul language and vile insults hurled at them as they walked on and off the field. They are one of the most ‘one-eyed, ignorant and dim set of supporters I’ve ever come across,’ he said of the Birmingham mob.

What everyone was agreed on was that at the final whistle Dyche had revealed a level of emotion far greater than usual. He surely knew deep inside what every supporter knew, that this had been a monumental win. Managers might argue that there are no such things as must win games until you reach the very end of the season and this was certainly one of them.  A defeat might have ended any hopes of automatic promotion. But everyone could now look to the Tuesday game with Boro and think that a win might just be the one that could almost secure the second spot place.

But, said Andre Gray before the game, ‘It’s not going to be fancy football and cutting teams open. We’re up there for a reason so teams will sit in and make it hard for us; it’s about trying to take our chances when they come.’

Taking the chances that had come his way during the season had just earned him the prestigious Skybet Championship Player of the Year award announced the evening after the Birmingham game. Burnley fans haven’t done too badly with the strikers they’ve been able to see in recent seasons, Charlie Austin, Danny Ings and now Gray with Vokes too chipping in with his fair share of goals.

The Press were well into the top-three situation in the division cranking up the hype suggesting that tension, tetchiness and terseness were on the increase. There were the inevitable ‘what-if’ scenarios… if Burnley won, or Brighton lost to QPR, or if it was a draw, or if Middlesbrough won and then there were the remaining games of the season and who was likely to win or lose them. The ‘noise’ Dyche described it, which you switched off, ignored it, just got on with the job and concentrated on thinking about the one game ahead. But permutations and ‘what-ifs’ are what we fans do and board members as well no doubt, fans just like the rest of us. One thing was simple enough though: the side that won its final four games would go up.

Over at Middlesbrough Karanka, he who had reportedly walked out on his club some weeks earlier and persuaded to return by Chairman Gibson, was certainly getting Karanky again blurting that if he’d had 12 players from the Premier League (Burnley of course) and his chairman had bought him Gray and Tarkowski, maybe Boro would have been in the Premier League by February already. ‘I would have had no excuses not to win promotion.’

It did seem rather silly to be saying such things when Boro had certainly spent far more than Burnley. The prize on offer at the end of the season had gone up again. Just like the £6million paid for Andre Gray rises by a million or two with each press report, so too does the Premier League jackpot now said to be £200million for the promoted teams even if relegated immediately.

‘Somebody has to blink,’ wrote Paul Wilson in the Guardian. According to Wilson Dyche was playing the whole thing down, his attitude being you only get three points for a game at this stage of the season, same as you do at the beginning. He says he doesn’t talk about promotion with the players, that there is no need to overthink the situation or get ahead of themselves.  What’s important is retaining common sense and doing the things they’ve done all season. Far from his mind are any thoughts about setting a new post-war unbeaten record if they remain unbeaten until the end of the season. But, he said, he is addicted to winning and picking up points.

And then in a more tribal vein in a different interview: ‘Bring it on, we’re ready,’ said Dyche presumably sticking out his chin. The day before the game only a few hundred seats were still available and the game was being beamed back to the Riverside for several thousand fans.

A brilliant clear blue sky over Leeds early morning: was I the only one thinking this had the feel of a Wembley Play-off Final to it, or at the very least a play-off. That last minute equaliser away at Brighton that salvaged a point now seemed huge; so did that slow-motion moment the ball bounced off the cross-bar, again in the dying moments of a game, at home to Cardiff, denying the away side the win. When Danny Batth had scored in the last minute for Wolves at Burnley, Brighton had scraped a win only because MK Dons missed a last-minute penalty. The images of these last-minute scenarios would not go away. You wondered if it would be same in this huge game at Turf Moor.

You assumed that Dyche would be telling his players to forget all these things and just do the one job in hand. You hoped that Karanka’s temperamental edginess would rub off on his players; his walk-out was bizarre to say the least. But since his return, Middlesbrough had won all six games. Sometimes you can’t quite work football out or how it works.

Sometimes too you just marvel at football when a game comes along that leaves you breathless and voiceless. Such a game was the 1-1 draw between Burnley and Boro. Sometimes you wonder just what is the point of a 1-1 draw, so often they are nothing games, stalemates, games to forget; at least with a 0-0 there is the achievement of a clean sheet. And then sometimes along comes a 1-1 game that has everything from minute one to minute 90, or in this case minute 96.

This time it was Middlesbrough’s turn to be on the wrong end of an injury time goal and what we might well remember most about this season when it does come to its still totally unpredictable end is the number of times that last minute goals have brought us despair, or brought us joy. In this game it was despair for Boro and joy for Burnley.

Karanka disagreed with any suggestion that a draw was a fair result claiming that his side could have had three goals if chances had gone in. But then by the same token Burnley could have had three goals or more if chances had been taken or shots more accurate. Just one shot out of 19 by Burnley was on target according to the stats with Arfield wasting a glorious first-half chance when put through long before Boro scored their second-half goal, the result of a free kick that had most of us scratching our heads and wondering what it was for. Ironically, picking the ball out of the net was the most strenuous thing Heaton had to do all night. It was hard to think of a single save he had to make.

Referee Jones had given soft head-scratching decisions to Boro all night long and this one was right in that category. It made Burnley’s injury-time equaliser all the more deserved; a Boro win would have been a rank injustice.

Sure they played well, but that was in the first half when they showed just what a good side they are, strong, organised and sharp. But as early as the third minute they showed the cynical side when Barton was scythed down with an atrocious tackle that only resulted in a yellow card. Their goal was a gift from the referee but Barton was clearly in no mood to lie down. He along with the subs that came on, Barnes and Taylor in particular, changed the game, took it by the scruff of the neck, charged into Boro and got them on the back foot.

Barnes was on for Gray who had run himself into the ground to the point of exhaustion. He didn’t score but this was still one of his best games.

Into the final third and now it was Burnley on the up, forcing the play, with yet more corners, more of the possession, more of the passing. Karanka was in bizarre mode again critical of Burnley’s long ball game, patronisingly saying that HIS side played football. The stats showed otherwise. Burnley hit 85 long balls and Boro hit 107. Burnley made a total of 433 passes and Boro well less, 354. Karanka would do well to think before he opens his mouth after a game.

But none of this carping at him should take away what a great night under the floodlights this was. Some of the roads into Burnley were at a standstill. Harry Potts Way was heaving shoulder to shoulder. The stadium was packed with a crowd just three short of 21,000. Before the game it was chaotic as a long line of 200 people or more queued at the ticket collection point. The car park was jammed with cars and milling people. The beer tent was overflowing. The Burger van queue was the longest in living memory. The sun shone down on all of this with a blue sky overhead; the atmosphere was electric even before you got into the stadium. People knew just what the importance of this game was. The winner had there been one, might well have taken all.

When Boro scored, that man Rhodes again, they went wild, fans and staff and subs and players. The way the ref had quietly favoured them with several of his decisions, it would have been no surprise to have seen him do a little hop, skip and jump with them. But Burnley exhorted by King Joey marched back to the centre circle and readied themselves; they were far from down and out. MOTM had to be Barton yet again for his industry, drive, leadership, bravery, determination and no little skill.

Dyer, he of the electric heels was brought on. The space down the left was made for him but not one ball was played to him to let him use that pace. Ironically Ward had got down that empty wing several times only to ping crosses over that were far too hard.  Taylor was on too, and twice we willed his free kicks from 30 yards to fly in as we know they often do. That left foot of his is like a hammer. The first was on target arrowing home but at the last minute a Boro body deflected it for a corner. His second shot alas went high over the bar.

The announcement that there would be SIX minutes of added time acted like an adrenalin boost. It was as if the Gods had decided that now it was Burnley’s turn to benefit from their efforts to amuse themselves. It geed all of us up, galvanised us, it geed up the players and galvanised them. It was if we now knew they’d now go on to equalise. SIX minutes, six bloody minutes to salvage something and rescue the night – and that’s just what they did. There is not one shadow of doubt that the crowd was now the twelfth man as they provided a cauldron of noise, support and willpower as their voices cascaded down from all sides of the ground like a torrent of power and energy. A Glasgow Rangers fan at the game said in astonishment that 50,000 at Ibrox don’t make this noise. It must surely have spread to the players and my goodness did they respond.

What Taylor can also do is take pinpoint corners and it was from his second in stoppage time that the equaliser came. Over the ball went, Barton was involved in the box, it pinged around a bit and then there was Keane to rifle the ball home. That was when the roof of every stand nearly came off. Not since Blake scored that wonder goal against Manchester United way back in 2009 has a roar so loud been heard. Some folk said it was heard as far away as Colne and Nelson as it travelled around and across the surrounding landscapes. The hills were alive with the sound of a different kind of music. The players mobbed Keane and now it was the Burnley fans going wild and dancing with strangers.     The very foundations of the ground must have vibrated when that goal went in. But as the Beach Boys sang, these were Good Vibrations.

The raucous tribal roar went on until ears were deafened because with the knowledge that Brighton faraway to the south were by now winning 4-0, Burnley had once again slipped to third. Now as a result of this precious goal they were back to second, albeit only on goal difference, but back to a position where destiny was once again in their own hands. Boro were now content to settle for the draw, slowing the game down, the goalkeeper taking an age with his goal kicks. They knew that a fired-up rampant Burnley still had it in them to snatch not just the equaliser but a winner as well. There was, alas, no winner. The whistle went; we breathed deeply, stopped shaking, steadied our beating hearts and knew that we had seen an epic contest and a glorious advert for Championship football.

Pell mell, end to end, with a sprinkling of spice, decorated with pulsating play, said the Guardian.

We drove home knowing that if Burnley could win their last three games they would likely be promoted. With the final game of the season between Brighton and Middlesbrough, with both of them destined to lose two points in the event of a draw in the game, or one team destined to lose all three points, everything was to Burnley’s advantage… if…  if…

BURNLEY 1 LEEDS UNITED 0

BIRMINGHAM CITY 1 BURNLEY 2

I was thinking a bit. It gets harder as you get older but you have to keep trying. We were on the plane and I looked out the window and thought ‘hell that looks a long way down.’ I still don’t understand how aeroplanes manage to stay up in the air.

‘Awesome,’ said little Joe the first time he flew with us and the plane banked over the bay as it came down to land. ‘Awesome.’

So we were in Tenerife at Golf del Sur again looking for some sun after this wet winter and cold (so far) April. Joe had his Tom Heaton kit with him and this season’s home strip. Last time we were there we met the Wellers, you know the guy, a quality car dealer that can be trusted (seriously). My mother once bought a car from a garage in Barnsley owned by a guy called Reg. Hmmm, I went, thinking is that a name that can be trusted? Turned out the car was OK in fact. Certainly wouldn’t buy a car from a guy called Cameron, that’s for sure. If we had wingers who could evade full backs like Call-me-Dave’s dad avoided paying tax we’d have sorted automatic promotion by mid-season. And this £9million he’s spending to send everyone a let’s stay in the EU letter. What a waste, we could just about pay for the new Gawthorpe with that.

Friday was travel day and the day kicked off in the Yorkshire Lounge at Leeds/Bradford, a lounge so generous with its bacon and sausage sandwiches and the free bar it belies any notions that Yorkshire folk are mean and stingy. We booked to go back for a fortnight and just eat and sit there, read the complimentary mags, sip G&T’s and watch the planes. Who actually needs to go away at their prices?

Departure was not without a couple of hitches. At check-in I didn’t see the girl slip JET2 discount vouchers into the passports. It would cause a bit of a kafuffle later. What JET2 do in their infinite wisdom is make them the same size and format and colour as boarding cards. Inside the passport you wouldn’t know the difference.

Onto the next hurdle and the guy round the corner who checks the boarding cards had clearly forgotten his badge that said ‘Grumpy Yorkshireman’. I handed over all four boarding cards for him to scan them. Except they weren’t the boarding cards they were the discount vouchers. He looked like he had a mouth full of wasps as he stared at them disbelievingly.

‘What are these?’ he asked.

From where I stood they still looked like boarding cards. ‘Boarding cards,’ I answered cheerfully, ‘all four of them there are four of us.’

‘Well you won’t get far with these,’ he muttered looking at me like I was an idiot.  ‘These are discount vouchers,’ he added in a withering tone with a face that would have curdled a pint of milk. I can only assume he’d been up since about 2 or 3 in the morning and he was fed up of people going off on their jollies while he was stuck there bored witless. If I’d been quicker I’d have said well it’s a cut price flight.

But all I said was, ‘Eh?’ trying to appear intelligent. I laughed out loud realising what I’d done. He didn’t. Retrieving the discount vouchers I gave him the boarding cards. There wasn’t a thankyou or a glimmer of a smile as he handed them back. It was tempting to ask was he called Meldrew.

Next it was Mrs T’s turn to be under the spotlight. Unwittingly, the Gaviscon she carries with her in her handbag in a plain see-through phial, and not in the clear plastic bags that they like you to put these things in, was the catalyst for a bit of a conflab.

The woman on the scanner retrieved the handbag and handed it over to someone else. This next person rifled through the bag and fished out the phial.  Hmmm she said and held it up to the light. Hmmm, what’s this? Mrs T was about to say it’s only my Gaviscon but the phial was taken over to a nearby huddle of blokes and handed to them. Hmmm they all said, what’s this then?

One of them walked over. Hmmm, what’s this, he asked Mrs T. What she really wanted to say was, it’s my f***ing Gaviscon you idiot, but instead she replied politely.

‘Er it’s just my Gaviscon; sorry I forgot it was in my handbag.’

‘Ah digestion problems eh,’ he laughed in a voice loud enough to have a dozen nearby heads turn around out of curiosity. ‘My wife has them too.’

It was the last hiccup of the morning, save for the luggage being last off the plane at Tenerife South. I can’t remember when our luggage was ever first off. It’s funny how everybody you meet says their luggage is always last off but how can that be true? My theory that luggage checked in when you’re first in the queue will be first off, was as usual blown to smithereens.

Course: the downside of all this week in the sun was missing the Leeds game. The wins had dried up over the previous three games and performances had stuttered. There’d been that magic few days when we’d been 7 points clear at the top but that was being whittled away. Then there was also the worry that Leeds always seem to up their game a bit at Turf Moor with a real derby feel to these games; Lancashire versus Yorkshire, good versus evil, Lancashire Hot Pot versus Yorkshire Pudding, and similar stuff. It’s funny for me actually living in Leeds and I’ve frequently been asked have I never fancied going down to Elland Road and supporting them. On balance I think I’d rather go down to the dentists.

I was terribly sad to hear that my chum John and Leeds supporter that we’d met in Kalkan some time ago (he of the pale white legs) had suffered a heart attack recently. His wife Kath got him to Dewsbury A&E pronto quick and a couple of stents did the trick. Funnily enough the attack was shortly after he’d watched Leeds at Burnley on the telly. The consultant had been firm with his advice. ‘You really need to stop watching Leeds United. It can seriously damage your health.’

We’d been scanning the Daily Express front pages for weather forecasts but they’d been strangely absent for a while. The Express only seems interested in hurricane winds, killer blizzards and monsoon rain, and even then they’re usually wrong. On the day the damning news broke about the leaked tax haven documents, the Express headlined with something about Walnuts. Anyway: the forecast from other sources seemed optimistic enough for the week so in went the sun hats and creams.

Evans was still at Leeds even though it was forecast he was for the chop after Leeds had lost heavily at Brighton and Cellino had of late been strangely quiet. His son however, Edoardo, had been charged by the FA for abusive and insulting comments made on social media. Their centre-forward had been banned for 8 games for biting another player. That would have been understandable if they were still taking their own economy-measure lunches to the training ground and he’d been a bit peckish but this munch was actually during a game.

The Leeds natives were restless following the defeat at Rotherham and then the game at home to QPR when bigears40 on one website said watching that game was worse than watching paint dry with two teams competing for nothing, without leadership, with some players just a liability, baffling substitutions and promises of promotion ‘next year.’ Next season said Bigears40 would be like watching another coat of paint drying.

@baldyman1965 was brief and to the point. ‘We’re screwed.’

Steve Evans meanwhile commented ominously: ‘I think they are the champions in waiting but if we play as well as we can, it’s game on.’ That was our question too, which Leeds would turn up on the day?

A good Leeds side did turn up on the day but mercifully missed two great heading chances. If this wasn’t the longest 94 minutes I have ever sat through I don’t know what is. The viewing conditions were perfect. Behind us the pool, beyond that the blue sky and the majestic Mount Teide, the bar to our left and in front of us on the low table, lunch. A Leeds fan sat to our right shouting and ranting every time Barton made a tackle. He came in after the game started and was gobsmacked to hear that Leeds were already a goal down. A goal in a minute, settling the nerves or so we thought but from that moment on it was purgatory from where we sat.

A text book goal as well: Heaton to Vokes, the flick on to Gray who then passed to Arfield. He then jinked inside the box and unleashed a diagonal shot that went in. Any thoughts of turning on the style and cracking home a few more were soon dispelled when Leeds came into the game more and more and played damned well. Not until the final moments of the game was there another slick Burnley move and in between Woods missed two glorious headed chances.

We sat and squirmed but this was what Dyche referred to as the beauty of an ugly win with heroic defending, cleared corners and routine goalkeeping that stopped Leeds from inflicting any real damage. Leeds forced a dozen or more corners and all were comfortably headed away with Burnley admirably demonstrating why they were holding on to that top spot. It was another result where the opposition walk away wondering just how they have lost. Burnley had the knack yet again of playing poorly but defending manfully. Nick a goal, have a strong chin and keep the other buggars out is the basic ploy.

‘That’s how we win,’ I said to the Leeds fan who sat shaking his head at the missed chances and well aware of his own team’s shortcomings.

Arfield the subject of recent criticism was publicly defended by the manager who pointed out that he had more assists and goals than any other winger in the championship. And here he was again winning the points with his perfect strike. Boyd, too, could have added a carbon copy goal in the first half with a diagonal shot but his went inches wide.

And yet despite all that Leeds possession and good play, and all the nerves that jangled all afternoon, Barnes, on for the injured Vokes, could have sealed it in the final minute or so. Taylor also on as a sub, turned inside and played a lovely pass back to the incoming Barnes. He has to score, we yelled from Tenerife. He missed and put it wide.  The goal gaped, he was just 8 yards out, perfectly positioned but using his right foot he fluffed his lines and what would have been a belter of a goal was just a what if. We howled with exasperation.

What a relief when that whistle went. Maybe the day seemed better at Turf Moor but at Golf del Sur on a TV screen it was excruciating. Winning ugly is fine but winning ugly just 1-0 is not good for the heart. It was Shredded Wheat on the patio for breakfast. It was shredded nerves for lunch.

Another riposte from Dyche when someone said that’s another lucky win. ‘Lucky – I’ll show you the 11 penalties we should have had this season.’

Still top then on Saturday night but how football can change so quickly. By the time we got back home to a soaked, freezing cold hail and wind-blasted Leeds/Bradford airport that could have been mistaken for Wuthering Heights, Brighton had played twice and Middlesbrough once. We squirmed through dinner on Monday night in the restaurant with the Brighton game on the IPad. A last minute goal won the game for Brighton. A last minute goal won the game for Middlesbrough on Tuesday night and ruined another meal. On Friday night as we were on the way home Brighton then won 5-0 and there was Burnley down to third. From being 7 points ahead not that many days ago, they were now out of the automatic places.

Last minute and injury time goals could well decide how this season ends. Middlesbrough won at lunchtime at Bolton with what else but an injury time goal. Every time one of these last minute goals went in you thought back to the last minute Wolves equaliser at Burnley that deprived Burnley of the win and all three points. Being a glass not even half-full sort of bloke I’d turned to Mrs T convinced that it was a goal that could cost us the title. Her reply was to be expected.

‘Stop being so bloody miserable, your father was just the same.’ She knows full well how much that winds me up.

Squirming through the Leeds game ruined our lunch as we watched on TV. The last minute Brighton goal ruined dinner on Monday. The last minute Middlesbrough goal ruined our dinner on Tuesday. All I could think was thank God for Gaviscon. Feeling morose from time to time is part of the Burnley psyche and then seeing that last minute Boro goal at Bolton made a pretty convincing argument that the football Gods were having a little laugh at our expense. From 7 points ahead at the top to 5 points behind within just a few days seemed quite absurd.

But against Birmingham thank God for Boyd and Gray and a 2-1 win at a place where Burnley don’t win too often. We were due out for a meal on Saturday night. Boy did we enjoy this one.  There’s a case for saying that there is no such thing as a must-win game but this was the game that blew that idea right out of the water. In this nail-biting end to the season it was a simply massive win and put Burnley right back into a position that leaves not us, but Brighton playing catch-up.

My granny used to say ‘it’s me nerves,’ when she felt ill and out of sorts.  In this neck and neck end to the season I currently know what she meant. And fingers crossed we don’t need any more Gaviscon.